[157] The mesquite (Prosopis juliflora). The beans are still extensively used as food by the Indians of southern Arizona and northern Mexico.
[158] See p. 52, note 3.
[159] Probably the Colorado River. Buckingham Smith remarks that the Guadalquivir at Seville is about a hundred paces in width.
[160] The Pueblo Indians of New Mexico have cultivated gourds for use as rattles and receptacles, especially dippers, from time immemorial. If the Pecos were the stream, or one of the streams, whence the gourds were derived, they might have come from the pueblo of Pecos, southeast of the present Santa Fé; if from the Rio Grande, they might have come from various villages along that river and its tributaries in the north. See p. 95, note 1.
[161] Probably the escarpment that extends from Austin to Eagle Pass. The Colorado (which was probably the wide, deep stream previously encountered) was crossed seemingly below the present Austin. It should be remembered that the information regarding the point at which the mountains commenced to rise was given by Indians whose language the Spaniards could not understand. At any rate, the fact that the latter believed the mountains to rise fifteen leagues from the sea would tend to indicate that the direction they had been following was a northerly one. See the statement in the following paragraph of the text.
[162] According to Oviedo (p. 617): "This is an error of the printer, and should read 'little bags of margarite [pearl-mica],' instead of silver." Buckingham Smith translates Oviedo's margarita, "pearls," and Cabeza de Vaca's margarita (ch. 29) as "marquesite." It may be added that magnetic iron ore of the highest quality occurs in Mason County, Texas.
[163] In the face of such an assertion it is difficult to conceive that the Spaniards had been journeying directly westward, away from the coast.
[164] That is, they decided to change their course from northward to a more westward direction.
[165] The possession of one of these "medicine" rattles was not improbably one of the causes of the death of Estévanico at the hands of the Zuñis of Cibola in 1539. See the Introduction, and compare p. 90, note 2; p. 117, note 2.
[166] See p. 97, note 1.